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An interesting thread here in the Non-Classical Forum not too long ago discussed the Carpenters, in general, and Karen Carpenter, in particular.

The overwhelming consensus was that Karen was a rare and awesome talent with a beautifully resonant voice - a conclusion with which I readily and heartily concurred.

A generation before Karen there was Jo Stafford - equally talented and possessed of the same kind of highly enjoyable vocal qualities: lovely voice timbre (sort of a "smokey alto"), great breath control, ease and assurance of song delivery, and meaningful lyrics interpretation. In a word (or two): hugely listenable!

Some of you are, of course, familiar with Jo's work (although perhaps you haven't heard her for awhile). Others (of a somewhat more "tender" age mostly) may be totally unfamiliar with her, perhaps never - unbelieveably - having even heard of her. For you, it's time to correct this omission from your musical and cultural education.

So, to introduce (or re-introduce) you all to the many delights of an immersion in the lovely music of one of our best singers of "popular standards" ever, I present the following:

Good post JF, I remember some of these songs. In "No Other Love" I recognized the theme of a classical piano piece I learned when I was taking piano lessons, but I can't remember what it was. Does anybody know?

Originally posted by Bob Newbie: Chopin's Etude in E Major (I looked it up under Perry Como's info..I knew he recorded No Other Love) [/b]

Bob - to be just a little more precise, Jo Stafford's "No Other Love" is based on or adapted from Chopin's Etude, Opus 10, No. 3 (see my entry in the ABF 11th Recital available tomorrow - Fri., Aug. 15th).

Perry Como's "No Other Love", while a great song in itself, is not the same song as Jo's. Here it is at YouTube (combined in a medley with Rogers & Hammerstein's wonderful classic "If I Loved You":

“Early Autumn” recording from “Gunther”Gunther sent me this recording by e-mailbut I don't know how to link it here.

The link mentioned above about Karen Carpenter had a lot of exchange from Gunther, I believe it is where he and I met. He loves Jo Stafford, too.

Obituary:Jo Stafford, the wistful singing voice of the American home front during World War II and the Korean War, died on Wednesday at her home in Century City, Calif. She was 90.

Associated Press(Photo did not transfer to PWF)

Jo Stafford, a singer who was a favorite of American servicemen during World War II. The cause of death was congestive heart failure, her son, Tim Weston, said Friday. A favorite of American servicemen, Ms. Stafford earned the nickname G.I. Jo for her recordings in which her pure, nearly vibrato-less voice, with perfect intonation, conveyed steadfast devotion and reassurance with delicate understatement. She was the vocal embodiment of every serviceman’s dream girl faithfully tending the home fires while he was overseas. First as a member of the Pied Pipers, who sang with Tommy Dorsey and accompanied the young Frank Sinatra, and later as a soloist, Ms. Stafford enjoyed a stream of hits from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s. Her biggest hit, “You Belong to Me,” in 1952, sold two million copies.

Ms. Stafford sang everything from folk songs to novelties to hymns.

Her gift for hilarious musical parody was first revealed in the 1947 novelty sensation “Temptation” (“Tim-Tayshun”), a hillbilly spoof recorded under the name of Cinderella G. Stump with Red Ingle and the Natural Seven. It reached No. 1 on the music charts. A decade later, a party act with which she and her husband, the arranger and conductor Paul Weston, had amused their friends became a secondary comedy career, in which they impersonated Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, an excruciatingly bad New Jersey lounge act “presented by Jo Stafford and Paul Weston.” While Mr. Weston played the wrong chords and fudged the rhythm, Ms. Stafford sang a half-tone sharp.

Mr. Stafford won her only Grammy, for best comedy album (“Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris”), in 1961. The Edwardses records, the last of which was a hilariously inept 1977 single of “Stayin’ Alive,” with their version of “I Am Woman” on the flip side, rank as classic pop spoofs alongside those of Spike Jones and Weird Al Yankovic.

But it was as a balladeer interpreting standards like “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “Haunted Heart,” “All the Things You Are” and “The Nearness of You” that Ms. Stafford distilled as pure a vocal essence of romantic nostalgia as any pop singer of the 1940s and ’50s.

Jo Elizabeth Stafford was born on Nov. 12, 1917, in Coalinga, Calif., near Fresno and brought up in Long Beach.

As a child she studied voice and hoped to become an opera singer, but because of hard times decided to join her older sisters Christine and Pauline in a country-and-western singing group, the Stafford Sisters, who performed on the radio in Los Angeles.

After the Stafford Sisters broke up, Ms. Stafford, with seven male singers from two other groups, formed the Pied Pipers, an octet that caught the attention of Mr. Weston and Axel Stordahl, arrangers for the Dorsey band. Reduced to a quartet, the group joined Dorsey and quickly gained fame as the backup singers for Sinatra.

In 1940, the No. 1 hit “I’ll Never Smile Again” established the creamy Dorsey-Sinatra-Pied Pipers sound.

Ms. Stafford recorded her first solo record with Dorsey, “Little Man with a Candy Cigar,” in 1942. Her first husband, John Huddleston, whom she later divorced, was a singer in the group.

Two years later, she left the band to sign with Capitol Records, the new label established by Johnny Mercer. Along with Margaret Whiting and Peggy Lee, Ms. Stafford became one of Capitol’s three female pop mainstays. Mr. Weston became Capitol’s musical director and Ms. Stafford’s arranger and conductor. They married in 1952. Weston died in 1996. Besides their son, Tim, of Topanga, Calif., Ms. Stafford is survived by their daughter, Amy Wells of Calabasas, Calif.; a younger sister, Betty Jane; and four grandchildren.During the early Capitol years, Ms. Stafford’s U.S.O. tours and V-Discs (recordings specially made for servicemen) earned her the nickname G.I. Jo. In 1945, “Candy,” in which she and Pied Pipers accompanied Mr. Mercer, went to No. 1.

From the mid- ’40s on, Ms. Stafford was a major radio star, who sometimes used her show, “The Chesterfield Supper Club,” to acquaint the public with Southern Appalachian folk music. She recorded a groundbreaking album, “Jo Stafford Sings American Folk Songs” and followed it with “Songs of Scotland.”

Hope everyone gets a chance to hear her and the venue of music she sang.

Your secret is safe with me, Jason! If I can count on you you not to tell on me.

When every one else was listening to the Beatles and Elvis, I was listening to composers LeRoy Anderson, Jermone Kern, Sigmund Romberg, and pianist Roger Williams. I could get those 33's out for a spin, and would enjoy them just as much today.